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During my trip to Tokyo, I arrived in the Narita airport with a single mission: to ransack the back streets of Harajuku, Tokyo’s famed and over-promoted youth fashion district, for some utterly unique and fabulous finds to feed my long-starved closet. Despite Harajuku’s over-popularization through Gwen Stefani’s maniacal obsession with the district dwellers’ style as mentioned (and mispronounced) in her album (which I still listen to frequently), “Love.Angel.Music.Baby,” I was determined to get to the root of all the hype and figure out what exactly it is about this fashion-forward subculture that has the whole world so fascinated. Clearly, the fixation on Harajuku as an unmatched forerunner of underground and uniquely Asian style isn’t limited to photojournalists for international, glamorized indie publications and former American happy-ska divas turned global pop stars. According to Wikipedia, The Clash’s Joe Strummer wrote a song called Sanposuru Harajuku (A Stroll Through Harajuku), which he performed in 2002 with his then-current band, The Mescaleros, and Harajuku is even used as an avatar style on Second Life. Belle and Sebastian also mention Harajuku in their song I’m a Cuckoo, on their 2003 album “Dear Catastrophe Waitress” (which I adore just as much as “Love.Angel.Music.Baby”). 

I’d been to Harajuku before on previous trips to Tokyo, back when Gothic Lolita and Rockabilly were still widespread fashion statements and I was not in the position to ask my dad for shopping allowance to buy overpriced, outlandish clothes that would make me look even more like jail bait. I remember trudging open-mouthed beneath the arch that marked Takeshita-dori, utterly mesmerized and completely freaked out by the PVC and lace baby-doll dresses, towering platform shoes and platinum pomade hairdos that promenaded past me. These teens and twenty-somethings spurned by a culture that prides itself on principles of restraint totally blew my mind. I couldn’t help blatantly staring at the bizarre outfits, made even more conspicuous by the modest sashays and bowed heads they were partnered with. What these people held back in terms of demeanor, they overcompensated for in terms of personal style. My exposure to Harajuku style revealed a new way of looking at fashion — as a quiet means to rebel against the cookie-cutter norms of society without directly affecting anyone else — which I learned to adopt as a healthier means of blowing off steam during my formative years.

During my most recent homage to Harajuku, I noticed that Western fashion is making a more prominent impression on the subculture. Brands such as Bathing Ape and Vans fill up display windows and teenagers are dressed like Camden punks and Haight Street bohemians. Stores now sell shirts advertising CBGB’s and iconic American rock bands from The New York Dolls to Guns N’ Roses to Weezer. Other boutiques blast hip-hop while shop girls in Daisy Dukes wearing ghetto-fabulous hoop earrings and towering ponytails dance as they fold barely-there jersey tube dresses. Instead of schoolgirls flashing the peace sign for my camera, I found blonde surfer girls with flawless spray tans (in the spring) and crocheted sweaters.

These days, punk rock, the Beatnik movement, ’80s revival fashion and ’90s Industrial Goth have emerged as dominant trends in Harajuku. However, fashion fiends have used their uninhibited sense of style to amplify these trends in a manner nothing short of genius. In the same way that Pop Art raised its eyebrows at elitist attitudes, Harajuku’s exaggerated take on Western culture calls for a closer look. While the beliefs that fueled these style movements may have been lost in translation, the Japanese use pure aesthetics in a way that borders on satirical. For such a reticent people, the way Harajuku kids dress certainly speaks volumes to keen observers. Yeah, Western culture seems to have permeated Harajuku’s signature style, but the Tokyo fashionistas have managed to adopt it and metamorphose elements once unique to the West into quiet, beautiful and quirky overstatements that remain, at the end of the day, uniquely Japanese. However the trends may continue to evolve in Harajuku over time, there’s no doubt the whole world’s watching. Way to go.

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Wisdom and wisecracks are always welcome at whippersnappergirl@ hotmail.com.